The unauthorized taking of articles of merchandise has long been a problem for retail stores. Various efforts have been made to prevent such unauthorized taking, commonly called "shoplifting". Picard devised an electronic article surveillance system of the electromagnetic type as disclosed in his French patent application No. 763,681 published in 1934. The Picard system included a transmitter, a receiver and a ferromagnetic marker. Attempts have been made to reduce the size and cost of markers for article surveillance purposes as proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,921 to Pokalsky granted Feb. 4, 1986. In accordance with the disclosure of the Pokalsky patent, the drawn wire marker element is about 0.127 mm (127 microns) in diameter and, more importantly, the marker element itself is about 76.2 millimeters in length. U.S. Pat. No. Re. 32,427 to Gregor granted May 26, 1987 relates to a marker element which is an elongated, ductile strip of amorphous ferromagnetic material that retains its signal identity after being flexed or bent.